1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the generation of multiple control signals, and particularly to those useful for controlling a sub-varactor array of a voltage controlled oscillator such as in a phase-locked loop circuit.
2. Description of Problem to be Solved and Related Art
Phase locked loops (PLLs) have been known and studied for quite some time. Initially they were very expensive to implement, and found use in only the most technically-demanding and/or cost-insensitive applications. However, as the cost of integrated circuit technology has decreased over the years, and as the performance capability of such integrated circuit technology has increased, today PLLs are extremely inexpensive to implement and are found in wide use in many applications.
Within a traditional PLL, a filter block is frequently included to low-pass filter an output signal of a phase/frequency detector to generate a control signal for a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) in order to influence the frequency (and hence the phase) of the VCO output signal. The filter block is often implemented using a charge pump and one or more loop filter capacitors, as is well known in the art. Such loop filter capacitors may be required to be very large for the PLL to exhibit acceptable peaking behavior in its frequency response.
Moreover, for certain applications, the loop bandwidth may need to be extremely low, including as low as 100 Hz. Achieving a bandwidth this low is very difficult using traditional techniques, and may require large capacitors which are difficult to integrate onto an integrated circuit without requiring large amounts of die area. For this reason, a loop filter capacitor is frequently provided externally. But such an external capacitor adds an additional complexity to board layout, and introduces noise susceptibility on the extremely critical loop filter node within the PLL.